By Kyle McCabe | March 2, 2010
Who cares what the glass looks like...is the beer any good?
Who cares how a website looks if it doesn’t work?
Well, the owner of the site, usually. Many of the websites I’ve built over the years have been for clients who care very much how their websites look, and often make decisions to enhance that aesthetic quality at the expense of usability (the ease with which a person uses the website).
Of course the “look” of a site is important. A website needs to draw and engage the eye quickly, or at the very least, not make the visitor puke on their keyboard (here, this might help you with that).
But drawing the eye is only part of the equation. Readers familiar with this subject might here expect me to talk about “function”, and how it needs to take precedence over “form.” In other words, don’t sacrifice usability for flashy eye-candy. But we all understand that, don’t we? I don’t need to beat this dead horse, because look, here’s a perfectly good, live horse that’s ripe for a beating:
Form follows Function follows Content
What’s usually left out of the puzzle is content. Yet content is the most important piece. It’s what the internet is about; it’s what you visit websites for. It’s what you came here for. You’re reading content right now.
Would it make a difference to you if this site was ugly (go ahead, call the site ugly–Google knows where you live), so long as you were still interested in this article?
Further (let’s assume you came via direct link), would it have mattered to you if, when you came here to read this article, the navigation was broken, the images didn’t show up, or the styles or scripts didn’t operate quite right? Would you still have read the article? I think so, provided you were interested enough. And interest in content is only effected by lack of good function or form to the degree that lacking hinders your ability to view the content.
Form follows function follows content. Content comes first; it’s what we build the website around. As a designer, it’s always better for me to know the content before beginning design work. It allows me to design a better website, something that fits the content in look, layout, and function, and to do it much more efficiently.
The benefit to you, the business owner, is a better website all around.
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Photo courtesy of stevendepolo
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About the authorAs Content Development/SEM Director for RSA, Kyle spends most of his time thinking of ways to get a company-sanctioned afternoon nap. He's an amateur photographer, social communication junkie, gamer, musician, blogger, and all-around web geek. He enjoys reading, writing, and breaking bricks. You can find him on LinkedIn, Flickr, and Twitter.
2 people are conversing about "Is The Look Of A Website Most Important?"
From jerihastava | March 3, 2010 at 11:46 am:
A great looking website is certainly an asset, but design should always support the “shape” of the content, and no amount of planning before design begins can replace designing with actual content. In my experience, the very process of gathering and evaluating existing content, and generating new content invariably leads to changes that can be costly when design has been approved before a content strategy is in place.
From Kyle McCabe | March 3, 2010 at 1:44 pm:
Thanks for stopping by! Your comments are right on – planning must include real content, or it's just as wasted as first-phase design.
So many projects start with a “design” phase, and we have to backtrack, costing time and money. It's understandable for a client who isn't familiar with the process to want to jump straight to design, but we should know better by now.
Thanks again.